by Tami Joia

Created on: September 28, 2009   Last Updated: October 03, 2009

IDEA is The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law ensuring services to children with disabilities throughout the nation. IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education and related services to more than 6.5 million eligible infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities. See http://idea.ed.gov/, for more information, check out Determination of Eligibility

Congress found that many children with disabilities were not receiving an education. In an effort to prevent this from continuing and ensuring that ALL children in the U.S. had the opportunity to receive an education, IDEA, was created.

IDEA provides that children with disabilities have the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers. That said, specific guidelines and procedural safeguards were also included in IDEA to help school districts meet the mandated requirements in this law. So Congress provided for Special Education funds. Now, schools that receive federal funds must provide special education services, they must implement IDEA to the fullest, otherwise, IDEA also includes what's called DUE PROCESS. IDEA is great for our children with disabilities, it forces school districts to provide an education to all children, if they want the federal funding. Is it perfect, absolutely not, are school districts getting the appropriate funds, not so much.

However, if you look at the statistical data of children who don't have a disability with respect to the drop out rates and lack of reading, and comprehension and math abilities, as compared to other comparable countries like the U.S., school districts aren't doing so great with them either. Back in the day, parents hid children with disabilities from the community. Kept them locked up in a room somewhere. They were considered to be ineducable. We've come a long way baby. Medical science has improved the fatality rate of what was once a death sentence such as car accidents, problems at birth, premature babies, they are surviving. They are surviving at a much higher rate, however, sometimes with disabilities. Should we lock all of these children in a closest to make it easier on school districts? Thank god, Congress thought differently.

IDEA provides for services for children at age 3 to 21, see http://idea.ed.gov/explore/home for more information. Some of the services include, but are not limited to; social skills, speech and language therapy, communication devices, behavior plans, applied

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